Category: Utilities

iOS 6 is now officially available for downloading to your favourite iOS device, and for the most part it’s a worthy upgrade to Apple’s mobile operating system.

I’m still a little peeved by the elimination of the Google-powered Maps app, especially the super-convenient Street View option which, for now, remains a Google exclusive.

But what Apple takes away on the one hand, they also give with the other. Case in point: Inserting photos and videos into emails.

In past revisions of iOS, adding a photo or video to an email required you to know that you wanted to include one first – before composing your message. You needed to start in the Photos app, and then select the appropriate photos or video from your collection and then choose to share them via email.

The files would “fly” into a new email window and you could begin the somewhat tedious task of trying to arrange your text around these inline elements.

It wasn’t a bad system if all you wanted was to blast off a few pics to a friend, but if you actually wanted to describe a situation using multiple photos, with text in between, it lacked the kind of flexibility that other email systems offer.

But with iOS 6, all this has changed – and for the better.

Now, when you want to include photos or video, you don’t have to pre-plan.

Simply start composing a new email, then, when you get to the spot where you want to insert your file, simply tap-and-hold on the screen – the same way you would if you were going to copy/paste some text, and look at the dialog box that pops up.

You’ll notice that there is a small arrow to the right of the displayed options. Tap that arrow once, and you’ll see the brand new “Insert Photo or Video” option.

Tapping it takes you straight to your Photos app, where you can select your item (just one – no multi-select is available). Once chosen, the item gets dropped into your message, exactly where you tapped.

Apple’s iCloud is possibly the best thing to happen to smartphones since the touch-screen. Not only does it seamlessly synchronize your data between all of your iOS devices, it does the same thing for your Mac or PC – and – it acts as a tether-free way to backup the contents of your iPhone.

When I recently switched from my iOS 5 equipped iPhone 4 to the loaner iPhone 4S I started using last week, I used the iCloud restore feature to port all of my settings and apps. The result was astounding. After the restore, which by the way was completely done over Wi-Fi – no tethering to a computer or iTunes – my 4S looked like a complete clone of my 4, right down to the wallpaper for my lock and home screens. The only thing I had to do was re-enter my Wi-Fi passwords.

But I digress…

One thing I noticed about this process was, while the backup and restore via iCloud was impressive, my backup size was really big. In fact, I had already come close to using up all of the free 5GB that Apple allots to all iOS 5 Apple IDs. If I only had the one device, that might not be the end of the world. But the iPhone is just one of three iOS devices I use under my Apple ID and there’s simply no way I was going to be able to back the other two up without needing some more room.

But it turns out there’s a simple way to drastically reduce the size of your iPhone backup.

When you go into your iCloud settings, and check out the options for Backup and Storage, you’ll see that each and every app on your device can be set to have its data backed up, or not. Including the Camera Roll. That’s key, because if you’re like most iPhone users and you make regular use of the awesome camera on these phones, you probably have plenty of photos and videos.

When I checked mine, it was sitting at 4.4 GB!

No wonder I was almost out of room. So I turned it off.

Huh? Yep, I turned it off and saved myself nearly all of the storage space I had been sucking up. I know what you’re thinking, but my photos are *still* backed up.

Here’s why: The PhotoStream feature on iOS 5, when turned on, automatically keeps a copy of the last 1,000 photos you’ve taken, regardless of which device you used, on a 30-day rolling period. And those photos do NOT count toward your Backup and Storage capacity. It’s free storage from Apple, and it’s even better than using your iCloud storage space. PhotoStream sends your photos to your computer which is ultimately where you want them anyway.

There’s only one caveat. If you take a lot of video on your iPhone or iPod Touch, you’ll need to remember to back these up manually, since PhotoStream doesn’t backup your videos – only your photos.

One last thought if you’re thinking that backing up your Camera Roll is something you want to keep doing: your iCloud storage space isn’t the only area that is impacted.

When your phone is locked and plugged into power and connected to Wi-Fi, it will automatically backup your data. For most people, that means overnight while you’re sleeping at home.

Consider that even a backup of 2GB can consume a good chunk of your bandwidth cap, it’s well worth keeping your backups as small as possible.

Make sure you check the full list of apps that are backing up to iCloud – most use virtually no room, but some can be hefty. Check out those Songify and Kindle items in the image above. Only 70Mb between them, but I have very few books or songs in there. It could go much higher.

I’ve never been a MobileMe user. So when I upgraded to iOS 5 the other day, I happily went along with the instructions on how to create a free account and never gave the experience another thought.

But that was decidedly not the case for one of our mobile developers here at Sympatico.ca. Chris Tsang has been a MobileMe guy for, well, a *really* long time. But this loyalty to Apple’s much-criticized product nearly had him tearing his hair out when he upgraded to iOS 5.

Let his experience be a cautionary tale (and a darn good explanation of what *not* to do) for all you MobileMe folks out there, especially if you want to use iCloud…

After downloading the ios 5 update, my iphone 4 was ready for me to setup. You’ll get to a screen that asks you for your Apple ID. If you previously had a mobileme account you need to make sure that you enter in your mobileme email instead of your AppleID used for iTunes purchases. If you enter in your AppleID you’ll find that you won’t be able to use icloud services with your precious mobileme email. If you go to iCloud settings and attempt to slide email to on, it will ask you if you want to create a free .me account which won’t make sense because you already have one.

To fix this, I had to erase all content and settings and start over. Once I got to the Apple ID screen again, enter your mobileme email address and then continue with the setup. Once you are finished with the setup you will see notice another unpleasant surprise in that you will notice that all of your apps are now missing. Don’t freak out just yet. You aren’t done yet.

The next step is to go to Settings>Store and then tap on your Apple ID at the bottom. Sign out and then sign back in with the account that you use for store purchases (your Apple ID that you have been using). Once you have done that you need to sync with iTunes once more and all your apps will come back.

This is actually an important step to transition from mobileme to icloud. In fact, if you don’t follow this process, you won’t be able to complete the iCloud setup on your Mac.

After doing all this you will be able to get access to all your previously purchased apps again and use the new iCloud services.